Student Snippets November

The owner of a Melbourne cafe that has been inundated with bad reviews after a fictional cafe with a similar name was mentioned in a year 12 exam question is now considering taking legal action.

More than 40, 000 students sat the VCE English exam this week and were asked to analyse a fictional review about a non-existent hipster cafe called Calmer Coffee in Benmore Village.

The review talked about a “tablet-wielding” waiter with a manbun who served burnt coffee and an “exhaustive list of frappes, soy and almond milks”.

After the exam, students posted unfavourable references from the exam – about bad decor and terrible service – on the social media accounts of a real business – Calmer Cafe in north west suburb of Aberfeldie.

Calmer Cafe owner Tara Conron accused the VCAA of carelessness.

“This is my livelihood, this is my business, I’ve spent 10 years of my life building it up,” she told Guardian Australia. “All the VCAA had to do was Google us.”

“vile and disgusting,” and an investigation has been launched by Victoria police.

“This is incredibly concerning for our school communities,” Merlino said. “These sort of vile and disgusting comments and posters are not acceptable in the community and those individuals that placed them should be ashamed of themselves.”

the private high school Melbourne Grammar and the select-entry Melbourne High, and an unnamed school in Sandringham, a beachside suburb in Melbourne’s south-east, had acted quickly to remove the posters.

The white supremacy group Antipodean Resistance has claimed responsibility. Members posted pictures on social media of themselves and the posters at the schools along with the statement: “these high schools are overrun by non-whites, which is encouraged by our traitorous government”.

The group describes itself as young Australians who are “at the forefront of Australian National Socialist activism, filling a long empty void”. They self-describe as Nazis, and said 60 posters had been placed around the schools.

The same group claimed responsibility for racist posters targeting Chinese students found on two university campuses last year.